COVID-19 third wave to affect children in India

Third COVID wave can see an exponential rise in children getting infected with the virus.

Pic Courtesy: Pixabay

New Delhi: While India is reeling under a deadly second COVID-19 wave,  Principal Scientific Adviser to the government K Vijay Raghavan has said on Wednesday that the third wave of the virus is inevitable.

“Phase three is inevitable given the higher levels of circulating virus, but it is not clear on what time-scale this phase three will occur. We should be prepared for new waves,” he said.

Experts are of the opinion that the third wave of the COVID-19 virus in India can affect children adversely.

According to experts, the first wave of the virus attacked the elderly, in the second wave more youth are affected and the third wave can be dangerous for children.

This age group is also more exposed to the virus as we do not have an approved vaccine to administer them yet in India.

Pfizer BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine has been approved to be given to kids between 12 to 15 years of age in Canada and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in USA is going to approve the vaccine for kids above 12 years by next week.

In India, there is already an acute shortage of the vaccine with only around 3 crore who have till now been administered both the doses of the vaccine, that is around 2 percent of the total population of India.

According to the US Chief Medical Officer Anthony Fauci, 85 percent of the country's total population will have to be vaccinated to prevent the coronavirus from spreading.

The third wave is also expected to be more lethal. “The thing to understand here is that when the first wave of COVID came, the virus would kill the lungs in 10 days. In the second wave, this time period reduced from 5 to 7 days. And it is being said that in the third wave, it can be even 2 to 3 days,” reports DNA.

Maharashtra government and BrihanMumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) are already gearing up to face the third COVID-19 wave by setting up pediatric COVID care wards (care wards for kids) in Mumbai and elsewhere in the state.

(With inputs from PTI)